


between love and war

by inwhispersandscreams



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:59:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inwhispersandscreams/pseuds/inwhispersandscreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is violence in her, and the others can't see it. But he can, God of War and Violence and Blood, he can see this violence within her. And he worships it.<br/><i>Conquer me like a city, my love,</i> he thinks as her nails dig hard into the skin of his shoulders. <i>Leave me as your ruins and I shall be happy to be destroyed by your touch.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	between love and war

She is wrapped in gauze and silk, curls of her shining hair lying upon her breast, a sight that all men would kill for. No man, hero or villain, would remain true to their vows if Aphrodite offered them a night with her for a favour to be done. The sight of her is as the finest wine; it intoxicates with presence alone. The lesser trip over their words in her presence, stumble as they take leave of their minds and dedicate all thought and energy towards taking in the sight of her, feasting on what beauty is in front of them, but he is not a man. He is Ares, God of War, and his tongue remains smooth, even if the words that leave it are short and blunt. He is no King, but a God of blood and action, and he finds no time to flatter a goddess’ beauty whilst there are warriors he must watch and battles to fight in. He is never more alive than when he is in the thick of battle, blood upon his bare skin and a sword in his hands. It calls to him like nothing else.

But he is not immune to her, to her grace, to her beauty, to the sight of her breasts moving as she takes in each breath. The curve of her lips and the movement of her limbs has an unearthly grace which would see her bathing in blood on a battlefield, weaving in between each blow with movements more suited to dancing, stilling men as they drank in the sight of her.

“Does the sight please you, my lord?” Even her voice was beautiful in its own way, soft and deep and full of the night time hours and murmurs of lovers as they lay together.

“Ask me again, my lady, once I’ve won this war,” is his response, the words clipped, his eyes moving across her. Beauty is for after the war, the embrace of a woman a comfort to wash away the knowledge of mortality. But he is a God and an immortal, and war is his way; he needs no comfort, no assuaging of guilt, for it is the way of war for there to be victors and deaths, for the lesser to be speared and broken and the cowardly to run and hide with a tail between their legs. No, he doesn’t need comfort after war – he needs _release_ , a way to shake the thrum of war from his blood. For once the excitement enters him, it does not leave, not until he is bested by a worthy opponent, and there is none worthy, no match for him and his skill and energy. No man may beat a God, not at his own sport, not at his calling. War calls to him and he will answer until he is exhausted – but he is never exhausted.

Her laughter rings out in the air between him. “Then by all means, go win yourself a war. I find myself eager to hear your answer.”

And come to her he does, when the battle is won. She is draped in nothing at all, but the long locks of her hair and the glow that comes from drinking of ambrosia. She is all golden skinned and playful eyes, and again she asks if the sight is pleasing to him. He has no answer but to take her in rough hands and press her against him, to take and take and _take_ from her mouth and the folds between her legs until she flips them over and presses him into the ground. With a leg thrown over him, she straddles him and rides him like she might a steed, and _this_ makes him buck himself into her.

He tastes defeat for the first time as she fucks him, as he feels her body control how he should move inside her, and surrenders to her will. He never knew defeat could feel so _sweet_ , so needed.

He has won wars for time beyond reckoning, and the victories are thrilling but now seem greater, after tasting what it means to lose, to surrender, to be at the mercy of another. For the first time in his long memory, he wants both – not just victory, but to _lose_ , to forfeit to another, to _her._

And he does. When the battles end, he moves to her, presses his mouth against her hard and rough, but it never ends with him taking what he wants and leaving. There is no city conquered, the walls burning, smoke rising high in the sky. She is not a battlefield he can conquer, but a force he must submit against, a war he will always lose.

He has never wanted defeat so much in his existence except in this one thing, when it comes from her arms and her kiss and her touch. In this alone he will accept it; in this alone, he _needs_ it.

 

When they leave one another, they do not leave unchanged. He places kisses against her bare flesh and nips at the skin of her breasts to leave purple bruises, and she presses her nails into his skin, sucks at the flesh of his throat to leave marks there. They carry the violence of their love upon them, each body a battlefield, a conquered city. His defences against her are nothing; they fall at the slightest provocation. Against her, he is rubble; he is ruin.

She refuses to leave his mind, except when he enters the heat of battle. War and her smell fill his mind at every moment, until they begin to blend together, her beauty becoming a thing of war. She has a face that makes him think of why wars may start, of lives lost and blood spent across the ground, all for a glance from her, all for a look and a touch and a ghost of affection from her. And he is hardly better than any of the men that were driven mad by longing for her; he too, God though he was, wanted to prostrate himself across the floor in front of her, have her walk, with dainty clean feet, over his back. He wanted to wipe nations clean off maps for her, be the scourge of the world if it suited her, all for the rise of her mouth into a smile, an echo of a laugh.

Beauty drives him mad, but a God of War is already half mad already - mad with blood and violence and lust.

When she comes to him, he should refuse her, should think that they ought to not. For she is bound, in holy marriage, to another, but what does love and lust care for vows that are spoken but never felt? They are creatures of fire, and she will take what she desires, and he will lay himself down in front of her as a supplicant. She is the beauty of war wrapped in a woman, and oh, how he _loves_ her for it. She is selfish and fickle and burns hotter than any fire within his blood stirred by slitting a man from throat to groin, and he feels alive again as she commands him to his knees in service to her. _Yes my love_ , whispered on his lips, and then louder as she commands it. She is his commander, his general, and he bows at her feet to listen to her words and obey them without hesitation.

There is violence in her, and the others can't see it. But he can, God of War and Violence and Blood, he can see this violence within her. And he worships it.

_Conquer me like a city, my love,_ he thinks as her nails dig hard into the skin of his shoulders. _Leave me as your ruins and I shall be happy to be destroyed by your touch._

He craves it, the destruction, the ruin, to be left quivering and shaking in the wake of her. He doesn’t wait for the battles to finish to go to her anymore; he goes to her whenever there is a chance to. She might turn him away with a laugh that only stirs his blood more, or she might take him to her bed, but he goes to her anyway. _Let me worship you_ , he thinks, _as the men and women do. Let me be as a man whilst we share this bed, and let me worship you_.

He worships her as he worships the tools of his trade. The same hands that polish and sharpen his blade so carefully and attentively show the same devotion to the curves of her body, the same eyes that know how to kill a man fifty paces away with a spear are just as adept at spotting her reactions to his touch. War lends itself to lust with a finesse that cannot be denied. He was born to kill men, and born to love her in the same way – without regret, without hesitation, full of vigour and passion and breathless excitement. _Let us make a war between us, and let you be my conqueror._

At night, he kneels at the altar of her and speaks his prayers into her thighs.

 

His mind is still in a fog from his release when the bronze net descends down upon him, the fine chains of it confining and burning upon his skin. He roars and thrashes against it, but the net traps them both to the bed and to each other’s naked bodies. Hephaestus – the misshapen, the crippled – stares down at his wife and her lover through the gold net and there is grim satisfaction in his eyes. He has caught them now, and Ares feels anger and violence stirring within his veins. This is no submission, no defeat on the battlefield, no honour in this at all. This is trickery and lacks all honour, and the defeat he faces now makes him burn with anger. He must be defeated with honour, in a battle between two of equal skill, and this is neither. This is no battle, and this lacks all honour.

But Aphrodite beside him is calm, only her downturned mouth a sign that her merriment is faded (and that too, he rages over, for the lack of shine in her eyes and the missing smile on her mouth). She is proud – and why not? Is this not her natural state, naked as the day she stepped from the foam of the waves, in the very act that she is Goddess of? She refuses to waver and bow her head with shame under the victory of her cunning husband.

“Have your no shame, wife?” is all that Hephaestus says, and he looks not at Aphrodite’s lover, but at the goddess alone. This is the indignity; not that Aphrodite sought Ares, but that she sought another at all, that she strayed from their marriage vows, but she never came to Hephaestus willing. She was a gift, a price to be paid to free one wife from another net that the smith had crafted with his nimble fingers and clever mind.

“Tell me husband, should love and sex and all things that fall in between be given to you alone?” she asked him, and there was a light in her eyes again, the tip of her lips tipping upwards. “For the sake of your shame, should I abandon my duties and let all living things slowly end for there is no love and pleasure to be spared? Should I cover my body with humiliation for what comes most natural to me, and bid my people that they must not allow their bulls to take cows for the indecency and _shame_ of it? No,” she continued, her voice carrying laughter and mirth. “I think not. I do not think I shall burn with shame for a slight against you, when it is no slight against _me_. You may smith all you like, but am I not to practice my own skills and talents too, with such fervour and diligence? Come then, see what you have caught with your net, and see what rewards you reap with it.” She reclined back then, stretching her body over the bed and closing her eyes, a hint of a smile upon her face. She remained in such a way, even as Hephaestus stormed from the room and called to the Gods so they might also witness what the smith god had caught himself. Ares bristled at this indignity, at the shame of being caught by a twisted version of a god, at the laughter that came when Zeus and Hermes and all of their god-kin entered the room to find him caught so, but her, not so. _Shameless!_ Hephaestus declared to Zeus, _a wanton, shameless thing you have given me as a bride!_

Did he not understand her, her with beauty and love like a war? She was not to be given, but to be _courted_ , like death and happiness and all things, to be submitted to but not to expect submission from. And though Hephaestus could beat iron and bronze and all manner of metals into submission, craft statues of gold so well that they are brought to life through their likeness to reality, he could not do the same to her, not take his hammer and bend her to his will. They begged for scraps for her; they did not to expect her to wait for them.

At length, the bronze net is lifted from them, and he leaps to his feet, lunging towards the smith god but it is her hand – slight and gentle – on his arm that holds him back. She brushes past them all, still naked and pale cheeked, and he watches her go, restless and chafing to follow her. The fire kindles in his veins, and there is no release for it for this time, no war to fight or love like a battle.

His fingers itch to take a spear and sword and plunge them through Hephaestus’ twisted foot. Instead, below them, a tribe of men go mad with battle lust. Blood spills, but it is not the golden ichor that Ares desires, but red, and all too mortal.

 

She comes to him again, clothed in nothing, and his eyes feast on her hungrily. He has seen this form in his dreams, ached to touch it, mark it, be claimed by it. He knows every rise and slope of it in the same way that any warrior knows the feeling of his sword in his hand, the exact weight and balance of the weapon. And once again, he does not think that they ought not, only that he has thirsted for a taste of her and the pain of her wrapped around him so tightly that she might choke the life from him. But if he had thought of such things, even still he would have paid them no heed. She comes to him to take what she wants from him, and he? He will give them to her, give her hearts ripped from the chests of his conquests and cities dedicated to her glory, but all she asks is for his mouth and his body pressed against her. And he gives it to her, eagerly, _passionately_ , in all the ways she desires and commands of him.

“My love is no man’s,” she tells him as her body claims him and their hips buck together. “Love is mine and I am love, and I will not be owned by one.”

She is not his alone, but any part of her is worth more than none at all. He has turned mad for her, violent for her. Olympus may burn and crash if it wants, the gods who laughed at them, entrapped on a bed, sitting on their golden thrones as they crumbled into fragments, but he will not care at all for it whilst she lingers in his arms. _Let the gods laugh_ – they do not have her in their arms, her taste on their tongues.

She belongs to no one, but he belongs to her, if that’s what she wants, for as long as she wants. It is his blessing that she returns to him, to share his bed and birth his children. The more she comes, the less she should be able to effect him, he thinks, in the same way that a trained soldier begins to see each blow before it comes as his training continues, but she destroys him every time. There is no resistance to her, no strategy to avoid her, only this, only _her_. Her taste, her touch, her body, her smile, her laugh and words and heat. It is bloodlust without the blood; just lust alone, in a woman’s form, pressed against him.

_Teach me your ways, my love, and let me be your battlefield. Take me in victory, and let me taste how sweet defeat is when it comes from your tongue._

If each act of their love is a battle, then he hopes that this war never ends. Let it span lifetimes and eons, til the fall of man is upon them and the world is wiped clean and resettled again by their creations – he will love her still. It is not his way to abandon his battles, but to see them through to bloody conclusion, and wars between two immortals may last until the world, at last, expires.

And even beyond it.


End file.
